In the meantime, I've written a book, from which this article is drawn, about all that I've learned from my research. In my book, I focus on what I identify as seven myths, or widely held beliefs, that dominate our educational practice. I start with the myth that teaching facts prevents understanding, because this (along with my second myth, that teacher-led instruction is passive) is the foundation of all the other myths I discuss. These myths have a long pedigree and provide the theoretical justification for so much of what goes on in schools. Taken together, all seven myths actually damage the education of our pupils. But here, let's focus on facts and the role knowledge has in our understanding.

Why Is It a Myth?

My aim here is not to criticize true conceptual understanding, genuine appreciation of significance, or higher-order skill development. All of these things are indeed the true aim of education. My argument is that facts and subject content are not opposed to such aims; instead, they are part of it. Rousseau, Dewey, and Freire were wrong to see facts as the enemy of understanding. All the scientific research of the last half-century proves them wrong. The modern bureaucrats and education experts who base policy and practice on their thinking are wrong too, and with less excuse, as they have been alive when evidence that refutes these ideas has been discovered. Rousseau was writing in the 18th century; Dewey at the turn of the 20th; Freire in the 1970s. Research from the second half of the 20th century tells us that their analyses of factual learning are based on fundamentally faulty premises.

If we want pupils to develop the skills of analysis and evaluation, they need to know things. Willingham puts it this way:23

Data from the last thirty years lead to a conclusion that is not scientifically challengeable: thinking well requires knowing facts, and that's true not just because you need something to think about. The very processes that teachers care about most—critical thinking processes such as reasoning and problem solving—are intimately intertwined with factual knowledge that is stored in long-term memory (not just found in the environment).

The main reason they do not work is because of a misguided, outdated, and pseudoscientific stigma against the teaching of knowledge. The evidence for the importance of knowledge is clear. We have a strong theoretical model that explains why knowledge is at the heart of cognition. We have strong empirical evidence about the success of curricula that teach knowledge. And we have strong empirical evidence about the success of pedagogy that promotes the effective transmission of knowledge. If we fail to teach knowledge, pupils fail to learn.

By neglecting to focus on knowledge accumulation, therefore, and assuming that you can just focus on developing conceptual understanding, today's common yet misguided educational practice ensures not only that pupils' knowledge will remain limited, but also that their conceptual understanding, notwithstanding all the apparent focus on it, will not develop either. By assuming that pupils can develop chronological awareness, write creatively, or think like a scientist without learning any facts, we are guaranteeing that they will not develop any of those skills. As Willingham and others have pointed out, knowledge builds to allow sophisticated higher-order responses. When the knowledge base is not in place, pupils struggle to develop understanding of a topic.

In a lot of the training material I read, these knowledge gaps were given very little attention. Generally, the word "knowledge" was used in a very pejorative way. The idea was that you were supposed to focus on skills like analysis, evaluation, synthesis, and so forth. Knowledge was the poor relation of these skills. Of course, I wanted my pupils to be able to analyze and evaluate, but it seemed to me that a pupil needed to know something to be able to analyze it. If a pupil doesn't know that the House of Lords isn't elected, how can you get him to have a debate or write an essay analyzing proposals for its reform? Likewise, if a pupil doesn't know what the three branches of government are in the United States, how can she understand debates in the papers about the Supreme Court striking down one of Congress's laws?

Teaching facts is critical to developing higher order thinking skills. An excellent case is made and the origins of our disdain for teaching facts in the works of Rousseau, Dewey, Freire and others is examined.

I think this article compliments some earlier discussions I saw on Bloom's Taxonomy in our class and also some of the discussions I saw on Common Core. I would be interested in what the K-12 folks think about this article.

"Applying critical thinking in the language classroom enables and encourages learners to speculate, criticize, and form conclusions about knowledge they already have as well as information they will acquire in the future. To activate and develop critical thinking in their students, language teachers need to set up tasks and activities and adjust their teaching programs and materials to promote such thinking. Teaching language through critical thinking enables learners to recognize a wide range of subjective analyses, to develop self-awareness, and to see linkages and complexities they might otherwise miss."

this brief piece focuses on teaching young children how to ask their own good questions using how and why, about authentic concerns, with flexibility. it discusses the need for teacher to model the process via think-aloud and to provide practice and feedback.

This taxonomy of learning behaviors can be thought of as “the goals of the learning process.” That is, after a learning episode, the learner should have acquired new skills, knowledge, and/or attitudes.

Synthesis: Builds a structure or pattern from diverse elements. Put parts
together to form a whole, with emphasis on creating a new meaning or structure.

Examples: Write a company operations or process manual. Design a machine to
perform a specific task. Integrates training from several sources to solve a
problem. Revises and process to improve the outcome.

Here's another poster to help get you thinking about how you can apply Bloom's higher-order thinking skills in your classroom. This poster shows the segments of an orange with each segment relating to a thinking skill and some helpful verbs to serve as prompts.

-Small group discussions- led by the instructor (Good way to start out a course to scaffold these principles) -Buzz groups- which allows two students to discuss an issue -Case discussions- using real or simulated complex problems to be analyzed in detail -Debating teams- where students improve their critical thinking skills by formulating ideas, defending their positions, and countering the opposition's conclusions -Jigsaw groups- students break up into subgroups to discuss various parts of a topic and then come together to present it or teach it to other classmates -Mock trials- students assume different roles in a trial setting

I think this is more of the article we had to read for class, but I am citing it here as there is more to it that I want to use. Describes how questions are the driving force of thought. Also describes the Socratic method in depth.

If we want thinking we must stimulate it with questions that lead students to further questions. We must overcome what previous schooling has done to the thinking of students. We must resuscitate minds that are largely dead when we receive them. We must give our students what might be called "artificial cogitation" (the intellectual equivalent of artificial respiration).

Arts teach student's to ask questions, not provide answers. Like in Improv - "Yes, and..." this agrees a concept and adds to the narrative. Never negate. Like and answer. "Why?" Game. Superficial question that digs for deeper answers.

This demonstrates that most of the time they are not thinking through the content they are presumed to be learning. This demonstrates that most of the time they are not learning the content they are presumed to be learning.